Avalanche add 6-time 20-goal scorer for dirt cheap

Tatar is no stranger to signing late in the offseason as just two summers ago, on August 5th, 2021, he inked a 2-year deal with the New Jersey Devils, which carried a $4.5M cap hit. Whether it's acting on the advice of his agent or just of his own free will, Tatar has likely cost himself a lot of money, waiting so long to sign during his last two sets of negotiations. However, it has also landed him in desirable locations in New Jersey and now Colorado, so it's not all bad.

The 32-year-old is a 6-time 20-goal scorer and is coming off of a 20-goal, 48-point campaign for the Devils in 2022-23. While he's a very productive player in the regular season, having tallied 211 goals and 455 points over a 783-game NHL career, he has struggled to find the same success in the postseason, having accumulated just 7 goals and 13 points over 52 career playoff games.

Tatar will be in tough to break into the top 6 in Colorado, with the likes of Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Valeri Nichushkin, Ryan Johansen, Ross Colton, Artturi Lehkonen, Miles Wood and Jonathan Drouin all competing for spots in the top 6. However, if injury or illness strikes, Tatar is a player who is very capable of stepping up and playing in a top-6 role if needed.

With the Tatar signing and Landeskog's LTIR placement now official, the Avalanche are now cap compliant by $525,000 ahead of training camp. They do, however, have a number of players on professional tryouts, so if they do wish to ink any of them to an NHL contract, they'll first need to clear some cap space, which they can do by waiving someone or assigning a waiver exempt player to the AHL.